A History of Education in South Africa up to 1994

• Conceptualisation and Methodology of the History of Education

  • Definition and Nature: The history of education is a branch of the broader field of history that specifically studies the past as it relates to education using primary and secondary sources. It is not possible to provide a singular definition, but the concept of time is central to the field. It involves the complex interaction of change and continuity, as well as cause and consequence.

  • Change vs. Progress: Change in the history of education does not necessarily mean progress. The real causes of educational events might only be understood long after they have occurred.

  • The Duties of Historians of Education (Laslett, 1987):     * To their own generation: To record past events as fully as possible and interpret them by filling in gaps, saving voices of the past from oblivion for contemporary and future benefits.     * To the people of the past: To record and interpret events as fully and accurately as possible.     * Academic and scholarly duty: To search for the truth to the utmost ability, acknowledging probable bias while conducting research to circumvent it.

  • Presentism/Ahistoricity: This is the tendency to critique past events by looking at them through contemporary perspectives and current norms. Historians must understand that past circumstances differ from current ones and should generally withhold explicit ethical judgments.

  • Historical Evidence Categories:     * Primary Sources: Created at the time of the event or soon after by someone involved. Often rare (sometimes single copies), found in National Archives (Pretoria), provincial archives, school archives, or online. Examples include logbooks, report cards, notices, photographs, oral testimonies, memoirs, film footage, policy documents, punishment books, minutes, and lesson plans.     * Secondary Sources: Second-hand published accounts created after the event, often using primary sources to build an argument. Found in libraries, homes, and online. Examples include textbooks, journals, newspapers, books, art, and feature films.

  • Historical Thinking Skills:     * Historical Time: Contextualising when and why events occurred.     * Historical Empathy: Understanding predecessors with different moral frameworks.     * Change and Continuity: Identifying what evolved and what remained stable.     * Cause and Consequence: Determining triggers and outcomes.     * Historical Evidence: Using contextualisation, close reading, and corroboration.     * Historical Significance: Determining importance.

  Traditional Indigenous Educational Practices

  • Background: Indigenous African communities (hunter-gatherers like the San and Khoi, and pastoralists/farmers like the Khoi and Bantu) had evolved educational systems long before white arrival.

  • Definition of 'Bantu': Used anthropologically to identify a broad language group; not to be confused with derogatory apartheid connotations. 'African' refers to Khoi/San and Bantu; 'Black' refers to all people of colour.

  • Nature of Education: Education was a direct response to socio-political and socio-economic settings. Society was the collective educator; children were raised in the community, by the community, for the community (Mbamara, 2004).

  • Informal Education: Transmitted orally through proverbs, riddles, epic narratives, praise-poetry, songs, chants, and folktales. These stories taught moral, spiritual, and cultural lessons.

  • Gender Bias in Socialization:     * Girls: Induction into household energy (firewood), water collection, gathering veld foods, tending fields, meal preparation, child-rearing, and housekeeping.     * Boys: Farming, house-building, herding livestock, hunting, and acting as retainers during war.     * Imitative Play: Girls played with dolls and cooked imaginary meals; boys staged mock battles and made clay animals or huts.

  • Age Groups and Regiments: Significant learning occurred in age-appropriate groups. Regiments of young men acquired military knowledge under respected leaders.

  • Formal Education and Initiation:     * Generally began after puberty.     * Initiation Ceremonies: Marked transitions to adulthood; involved transfer of community history, skills, and values. Neophytes (new initiates) followed specific practices acknowledging societal authority.     * Apprenticeship System: Formal training for functional duties: herbalists (medicine), drummers (communication), priests (spiritual), and ironmongers (industrial).

  • Characteristics: Hierarchical, class-conscious, male-dominated, and collective-focused. While non-literary (pre-literate), it included sophisticated scientific knowledge of plants, animals, and weather.

  • Ubuntu: A resilient philosophy that survived the arrival of white settlers.

  Education at the Cape: DEIC and Batavian Rule (1652-1806)

  • DEIC Period (1652-1795): The Dutch East India Company established a refreshment station under Jan van Riebeeck. Initially meant to be temporary, it became permanent as officials remained as farmers and traders.

  • Relationship with Church: Protestantism (Dutch Reformation) and education were inseparable. The Canons of Dort (1618) directed that schoolmasters teach reading, writing, languages, the liberal arts, godliness, and the Catechism.

  • Early Formal Schooling:     * $1658$: First school established for young slave children from the Portuguese ship Amersfoort (intercepted from Angola to Brazil).     * $1663$: School for $12$ white children, $4$ slave children, and $1$ Khoi child.     * $1676$: School for offspring of African and White parents.     * Hendrik Adriaan van Rheede ($1685$): Insisted on a separate school for slave children taught by Jan Pasqual (boys) and Margaret (girls, a freed slave). Specified that male slaves could buy freedom at age $25$ and females at $22$ if they spoke Dutch and were confirmed in the church.

  • Teacher Quality: Varied from runaway sailors to competent educators. Fundamental literacy was required for church confirmation (reading the Bible and writing one's name).

  • Structure and Governance:     * $1707$: Consistory (Ecclesiastical Court) established to oversee teachers.     * $1714$: Governor Mauritz Pasque de Chavonnes formalised teacher duties.     * Body of Scholars: Replaced the Consistory as a school board, though largely limited to Cape Town and Stellenbosch.

  • Racial Shift: By the $1730s$, race became a major factor. The 'Trek Boers' in the interior developed fundamentalist views of white superiority, leading to the gradual exclusion of Coloured and slave children from formal schools.

  • Muslim Education: A success story. Iman Abdullah ibn Kadi (Qadri) Abdus Salaam (known as Tuan Guru), brought in $1780$ as a political prisoner, established a madrasah. It used early forms of Afrikaans written in Arabic script as the medium of instruction.

  • Batavian Rule (1803-1806): Following a brief British occupation ($1795-1803$), the Netherlands (as the Batavian Government) regained control.

  • Jacob De Mist: Commissioner-General who proposed secular, state-funded, mother-tongue education. He advocated for professional teacher training, school books, a public library, and a museum. His progressive ideas were halted by the British return in $1807$.

  Education under British Colonial Rule (1807-1910)

  • Cape Reform (Sir John Cradock and Lord Charles Somerset):     * Religious Continuity: Cradock maintained Bible-based education to appease the Dutch population.     * Monitor Schools: A system of mutual instruction where able learners (monitors) helped teachers. This was cheaper and allowed larger classes to address poverty-stricken areas.     * Anglicization: Somerset proclaimed English the official language in $1822$. Dutch teachers were replaced by English ones in $1824$.

  • Dutch Resistance and the Great Trek ($1834$): Afrikaners/Boers found the British system irreligious and foreign. The emancipation of slaves in $1834$ and anglicization led to the Great Trek, where Boers moved into the interior.

  • James Rose Innes: Appointed in $1839$ as the first superintendent-general of education in the Cape.

  • Colony of Natal (1843-1910):     * Attempted to replicate the Cape system (free, non-denominational).     * Indian Education: Indian indentured labourers arrived in Nov.     1860. Father Luber Sabon started the first Indian school in Durban ($1867$) teaching Tamil and English. By $1900$, there were $3281$ Indian children in $18$ schools. Only $10\%$ were girls.

  Education in the Boer Republics

  • The Orange Free State (OFS):     * Education was initially wandering teachers or home-schooling using the Bible.     * Education Act ($1872$): Made the state responsible for maintaining schools and paying salaries.     * Compulsory Attendance: Instituted for all White children aged $7$ to $16$ living within a $3,2\,km$ radius of a government school.     * Curriculum: Reading, writing, arithmetic, grammar, Bible history, geography, and general history. Optional: French, German, Latin, and math.

  • The Transvaal Republic (ZAR):     * $1837$: First formal white school opened in a mud-brick building (Potchefstroom) for $20$ learners.     * Thomas Burgers ($1871$): Attempted to modernise the system based on the Netherlands, but faced opposition for excluding religious instruction.     * Language Conflict: Discovery of gold ($1886$) brought English-speaking immigrants. Dissatisfaction with Dutch-only policies led to the formation of the Transvaal National Union.

  Mission Education in South Africa

  • Purpose: Education served as a vehicle to spread Christianity to those viewed as 'uncivilised'.

  • The Moravians: Georg Schmidt ($1737$) worked with the Khoi at Genadendal. This was the first teacher training establishment in South Africa. Settlers resented him for treating the Khoi as equals.

  • Key Societies: London Mission Society, Paris Mission Society, Rhenish Mission Society (taught the 'dignity of labour'), Berlin Mission Society, and American Board Mission (Adams College).

  • Impact:     * Language: Missionaries developed written forms of African languages and set up printing presses for translated Bibles.     * African Elite: Produced leaders like Nelson Mandela (Clarkebury), Steve Biko (St Francis), and John Dube.     * Middle Class: Created the Amakholwa in Natal, who competed successfully with White settlers.     * Cultural Erosion: Required Africans to abandon initiation and traditional practices.

  Education from the South African War to 1948

  • Concentration Camps ($1899-1902$): Boers and Africans were forcibly removed to camps. British authorities used camp schools to try and anglicise Boer children. On $31\,May\,1902$, $12\,066$ children were attending camp schools.

  • CNE Schools: Afrikaners resisted British anglicization by opening Christian National Education schools, funded by the Netherlands. CNE ideology: Calvinist, mother-tongue, and no mixing of races.

  • General J.C. Smuts and the 1907 Act: Aimed to bring Afrikaners and English together. Free primary education was provided, and schooling was compulsory for whites aged $7$ to $14$. It entrenched separate schools for Whites and Blacks.

  • Union of South Africa ($31\,May\,1910$): Created a unitary state but led to uneconomical duplication of four provincial systems. Control eventually shifted to the central government.

  • Black Education Pre-1948:     * Curriculum was adapted to 'real, everyday needs' ($1919$), focusing on manual labor for the professional market.     * In $1925$, there were $2702$ mission schools ($215\,956$ learners) vs. only $68$ government schools ($7710$ learners).     * Eiselen Committee: Recommended terminating provincial control of African education and transferring it to the central government, with schools classified by language rather than denomination.

National Party Rule and Apartheid (1948-1994)

• 1967 National Education Policy Act: Formally legislated CNE for white learners, specifying education must have a 'religious nature' and use either Afrikaans or English. Education was funded by the state.

• Coloured and Indian Education:     * $1963$: Coloured Persons Education Act.     * $1965$: Indian education centralised under the Department of Indian Affairs.     * Platoon and Double-Shift Classes: Used in Indian schools to cope with infrastructure shortfalls; teachers worked twice as much to accommodate different groups.

• Bantu Education Act ($1953$):     * Transferred control of African schools to the central Bantu Education Department (Department of Native Affairs).     * Mission schools that refused compliance closed down. Curricula were 'watered down' to focus on semi-skilled labour.     * Hendrik Verwoerd: Stated Africans should not aspire to positions they would not be allowed to hold in White society.

• Resistance:     * $1954$: ANC Resist Apartheid Campaign; 'cultural clubs' founded.     * $26\,June\,1955$: Freedom Charter adopted at Kliptown, declaring 'The Doors of Learning and Culture Shall Be Opened!'.     * $16\,June\,1976$: Soweto Uprising triggered by the Afrikaans Medium Decree ($1974$) requiring subjects like math and social science to be taught in Afrikaans.

• 1980s Crisis:     * Slogans like 'Liberation Now, Education Later'.     * NECC ($1985$): Call for 'People's Education for People's Power'.

• End of Apartheid: Factors including economic sanctions, the end of the Cold War, and internal resistance led to the unbanning of parties and the release of prisoners.

• South African Schools Act ($Act\,No.\,84\,of\,1996$): Established a non-racist, inclusive system for all citizens after Nelson Mandela's $1994$ election.

Case Study: Sandra Laing ($1966$)

• Scenario: A ten-year-old girl born to White parents who supported the National Party. Due to a genetic 'throwback', she appeared Black.

• Outcome: On $10\,March\,1966$, she was escorted from her all-white primary school by police after years of pressure from teachers and parents to have her expelled. This remains a potent symbol of a nation built on prejudice and the cruelty of racial classification laws in education.